The present invention relates to an elevator installation comprising a set of cars which serve a building, where said installation is designed to allow certain users to have priority access to one of the cars. The invention also relates to a process for accessing a car in a priority manner.
Up until now, all elevator users have been treated equally, independent of their title or the emergency nature of their travel in the elevator. When a user arrives on a landing in front of the elevator of a building, he must wait for one of the cars to arrive along with all the other users already on this landing. The car will not bring him directly to his intended floor, but rather it will generally stop at intermediate floors in order to allow users to get off and/or on.
However, certain persons cannot afford time to wait for a car to become free or for it to stop during the trip. This is the case, for example, for management personnel and other distinguished persons (VIPs or Very Important Persons) who generally have their offices on the top floor of the building, and therefore in the zone which requires the longest service time. These persons are frequently in a hurry and do not like to wait. This is also the case for the transport of currency, prisoners, or persons who do not wish to be seen when they enter or leave the building.
There are known cases of certain buildings which have, in addition to an installation available to ordinary users, a private elevator installation assigned only to the VIPs. However, this solution cannot be adopted in all buildings, because it requires dedicating a relatively large area to a private installation which will be used less overall.
There is therefore a need for an elevator installation which is designed to allow a priority user to reserve one of the cars operation when he needs it.
A conventional elevator installation has a set of cars controlled by controllers which communicate with each other through at least one communications loop and a specific protocol which makes it possible to know all the landing calls and car dispatches, as well as the position of each car; to remove a given car from the set of cars, for example, in case of breakdown or maintenance of the car; and to send a car to a given level and then to open the cars doors or not upon arrival at the level. However, such an installation has the disadvantage that a user cannot intervene in the protocol in order to request that a car be assigned to him.
The objective of the present invention is to eliminate the disadvantages of known elevator installations by proposing an elevator installation that is designed to allow VIPs and similar persons to have priority access to a car without requiring the permanent assignment of a car to the priority user.
To this effect, the present invention relates to an elevator installation of the above-mentioned type, characterized by the fact that it further comprises:
a supervisor inserted in the communications loop, which is controlled by said protocol,
and some means of message exchange that allows a priority user to give commands to said supervisor, wherein a car is isolated from the set of cars, the selected car is sent to the desired level, doors closed, the user is informed that the car has arrived at the level, and the doors are opened when the user reaches the car.
According to an embodiment of the invention, the supervisor consists of a personal computer or the like. In this case, the supervisor can also be connected to a computer network that exists in most modem buildings or to the Internet.
The means of message exchange can include a telephone or a microphone and a modem which are connected to the supervisor in order to receive the messages sent by the user, and a voice server which transmits the received messages from the supervisor to the user.
An advantage of the invention is that if the protocol used by the set of elevators is sufficiently advanced, the setup of the invention will require no adaptation or modification of the controllers of the elevators, and consequently, the cost of modernization for an existing installation will be similar to that of the setup of the invention in a new installation.
The elevator installation according to the invention makes it possible by means of a computer program to do one or more of the following tasks:
to receive a telephone call sent by the priority user;
to identify a key pressed on the calling telephone;
to compose a telephone number;
to recover a voice message from the modem;
to transmit a voice message to the modem; and
to interrupt the transmission of a voice message.